Sonder
by orangeflavor
Summary: "He tells no one that he cries out her name in sleep." - A series of 100 word drabbles, a collection of glimpses into the lives of all our favorite characters from Thedas. Wide range. Multiple pairings and genres.
1. Only in Dreams

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: Chapters will be uploaded in bundles. Expect characters and pairings from all over the board.

Sonder

Chapter One: Only in Dreams

Bethany comes with the night and leaves with the dawn.

Carver tells no one.

He doesn't know how to tell them that he sees his dead sister in his sleep. That she comes to him, nightly, and he can touch her star-lined palm and hear her sun-washed voice. That she walks the hollow line around his heart. That the Fade grants him this secret, sacred reunion while demons whisper their temptations in his ear like spun silk.

He tells no one that he cries out her name in sleep.

Or that it is only in dreams that he is whole.


	2. More

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Sonder

Chapter Two: More

"Did you kill Cailan?" Anora's voice is like the strike of flint to steel.

Loghain stills, jaw clenching tight. His fingers curl around the arms of his throne. The air cracks and fractures between them.

She has always known the fierce grip of his patriotism, the silent strength of his loyalty. She has always known the edging distance of his affections and the faint hesitance of his touch.

But it isn't until his blaring silence fills the empty hall, his eyes as loud and damning as any proclamation, that Anora finally understands he will always love Fereldan more than her.


	3. Wishes

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Sonder

Chapter Three: Wishes

"Liddy likes it when you brush her hair, even though you are her brother. She counts the strokes like coins tossed in a fountain. A wish on every turn of the wrist." Cole's voice is a coarse whisper, broken by the crackle of the campfire's flames.

Blackwall stills his sharpening stone along his blade, eyes going dark.

Cole wraps his arms around his knees and shivers. "She laughs, the sound as delicate as night orchids."

Blackwall's voice is like shattered stone. "Please, stop."

Cole's eyes slide shut, his words a deadened breath of air. "She wished for you every time."


	4. Fenris Knows

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Sonder

Chapter Four: Fenris Knows

Fenris knows the sound of love.

It isn't Hawke's gasp of breath when his tongue dips to the hollow of her throat. It isn't the quiver of her sigh when his fingers trace the graceful edge of her collarbone, or the pitch of her laugh when they are three bottles deep and stumbling into his foyer, or even the shrill scream that tears through her chest when an arrow sinks deep into his heart.

It's the scrape of air along her throat when he presses his bloody fingers to her cheek and tells her she has always been his freedom.


	5. The Color of Regret

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Sonder

Chapter Five: The Color of Regret

Varric settles his mug of ale on the table, shifting his gaze to the ring of froth lining the edge. His fingers curve around the worn handle. His sigh weighs him down until he nearly sinks into the bench beneath him, into the floorboards and then the dirt, and then the dark, dank hollows of earth he _should_ call home but never has.

His brother's ring lies accusingly across the table. A single gold band inset with a ruby the color of regret, the color of Bartrand's blood still caked into the creases of his palms.

Varric orders another round.


	6. They Come and They Go

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Sonder

Chapter Six: They Come and They Go

"You smell like salt and freedom," Isabela breathes against Hawke's shoulder.

The other woman smiles beneath the cover of the pirate's dark hair, her fingers curling around her hip and anchoring at the base of her spine. She revels in the arch of Isabela's back, the resonant purr that spills from her lips and into the crook of Hawke's neck.

Isabela grips the sheets beneath them, her mouth tracing the line of Hawke's throat down to her breast. She breathes deep once more.

The waves come and they go and through the years, Isabela learns to cast her love ashore.


	7. Silence

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Sonder

Chapter Seven: Silence

Leliana knows the depths of silence intimately. She knows its peace and its chaos. She knows the empty stillness of a chantry chapel at the break of dawn, candles burnt throughout the night, the bright lip of the sun just ghosting through the high windows. And she knows the deafening quiet of blood-splattered snow, the burning wreckage of Haven looming bright and brilliant just over the mountain's edge.

But most of all, Leliana knows the silence of the Maker. The hush of unanswered prayers and the searing quiet of swallowed screams.

Most of all, she knows the silence of abandonment.


	8. Belonging

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Sonder

Chapter Eight: Belonging

Alistair's laugh breaks through the crackling of the campfire and swallows the air whole. Beside him, Duncan clamps a hand around his shoulder and joins him, resting the mug of mead in his hand along his knee.

The other Grey Wardens sitting around the fire guffaw and shout and splash their mead in joyous toasts. Alistair finally understands what it means to belong.

It's the wide grin stretched across Duncan's face. It's the warmth along Alistair's cheeks that has nothing to do with mead or fire.

It's the way he begins to understand that you carry your home with you.


	9. Remember

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Sonder

Chapter Nine: Remember

Early morning light filters in through Skyhold's library windows and Dorian is halfway through his cup of tea when he remembers. He stills mid-turn of a page.

 _Once I had a son who trusted me._

His father's voice is strained and thin, stretched taut like the skin across his knuckles when his hands reflexively clench into fists along the table. Standing swiftly, Dorian sweeps his hand along the table and sends the contents flying. The cup shatters against the tower wall and in the silence that follows the soft rustle of settling pages, Dorian drops to his knees and wails.


	10. Buried Beneath the Wind

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Sonder

Chapter Ten: Buried Beneath the Wind

Morrigan remembers the callous curve of her mother's back. The crack of her words. The bitter cut of her gaze when she caught Morrigan staring, wondering, _wishing_ for something in that wizened, old face that didn't reek of regret.

She remembers a dark forest and a darker heart and nights she lay awake wondering if love was meant to hurt this much.

Bracing her staff in the snow, Morrigan steadies herself, looking out over the expanse. Her hand finds its way to her swollen belly beneath her furs.

"Not you, my love."

Her whisper is buried beneath the wind, unheard.


	11. Taint

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Sonder

Chapter Eleven: Taint

"Sister." Carver has hissed the word, moaned it, shouted it, seethed it, even – and he will never admit this – laughed it. But never has it been such a broken gasp of air as it is now. Never has it caught in his throat and threatened to stay there. Never has it been full of such need.

The taint spreads quickly and painfully beneath his flesh, hollowing him out. Hawke's hands are steady on his back and his shoulders.

"It's your choice," she whispers, grip fierce.

It always has been.

But it takes the Deep Roads for him to see it.


	12. Taint (The B-side)

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Sonder

Chapter Twelve: Taint (The B-side)

"You have to let me go, Sister," Bethany coughs out, lips stained black.

Hawke closes her eyes to the sound, to the dark bruising around Bethany's eyes where the tainted blood clots threateningly, to the sallow tint of her fevered skin. She delivers her baby sister into Grey Warden hands.

It isn't until many years later, when Kirkwall is burning beneath Qunari hands – when she sees her sister for the last time and finds a dark stranger staring back at her – that Hawke finally understands.

It has always been her greatest mistake in wanting to protect something by caging it.


	13. Rest

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Sonder

Chapter Thirteen: Rest

Sitting along a broken Chantry beam, Anders looks out to the red-tinged sky and resigns himself to death. Hawke's blade is already pressed cool and slick to his throat. The wreckage of his conviction lies just beyond.

Hawke presses his shaking lips to the apostate's temple, sighing into his skin.

He has been running for such a long, long time – from the Circle, the Grey Wardens, even himself.

"I think I should like to rest awhile," he breathes, hands gripping his knees.

In the arc of his blood that splatters across the cold stone, Anders thinks he sees the Maker.


	14. In Service to the Qun

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Sonder

Chapter Fourteen: In Service to the Qun

Iron Bull spreads the ashes of his Chargers across the wind. It is cold. The evening horn sounds. Guards change their posts. It is a dark dusk this night.

Pulling a heavy breath through his aching chest, Bull grunts his acknowledgement when the Inquisitor steps up beside him. "Thank you for coming, kadan."

A hesitant touch on his arm. "Are you…okay?"

"They died in service to the Qun. Few can claim such an honor." His voice is tight like the cords of his muscles when his hands bunch into fists.

"Is that enough?"

A pause. "It will have to be."


	15. Dead and Buried

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Sonder

Chapter Fifteen: Dead and Buried

They are many pints deep when the air suddenly grows somber. Mahariel stills, eyes narrowing at the table.

Oghren raises a brow at her and belches, loudly.

Instead of the laugh he expects, the lithe elf only sighs, shoulders sagging with the sound. "I'm sorry, Oghren. About…Branka."

He watches her a moment, and then scratches at his bearded chin, eyes shifting to the tavern's fire-filled hearth . "Sod the whole blighted thing, Warden. Dead and buried anyway."

He couldn't rightly say whether he meant his marriage, his wife, or his heart.

In the end, he thinks it doesn't really matter.


	16. Home

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Sonder

Chapter Sixteen: Home

"Glad to be going home, Sten?" The Warden's smile was bright in the wake of their victory.

Hollowly, "Yes."

He looked her in the eye when he lied to her.

Because "home" had never been a place to Sten so much as it was a state of being and, in having searched so long for the soul he lost along the way – a rusted blade now traded over a dirty bar-top for cheap mead and a few coppers – he found that 'home' now meant standing in a darkened threshold, knocking on a door that would never open to him again.


	17. Winter-Born

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Sonder

Chapter Seventeen: Winter-Born

"It's a cold one this year, isn't it?" Hawke asks, going near cross-eyed as she tries to catch the image of her own breath puffed out into the chill. Her laugh is stiff and practiced and, from her place beside her, Aveline can see the ends of her lips curled like hooks left on a forgotten line.

With elbows leaning on the edge of Hawke's balcony, Aveline can see the bustling courtyard of Hightown below them.

"I was winter-born myself, you know," Hawke finishes, voice low like the sun beneath grey clouds.

Leandra's bedroom lies empty and untouched behind them.


	18. A Dead Warden's Gloves

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Sonder

Chapter Eighteen: A Dead Warden's Gloves

Years after the Blight, Zevran grips the dead warden's gloves in his hands.

"Was she happy?" Alistair manages, throat constricting on the words.

The former assassin locks gazes with the king, shadow playing across his face so that neither can be sure if it is grief or resentment that lingers in his gaze.

Perhaps it is both.

"I think she was," Zevran chokes out, half finality, half surprise.

A noise like something drowning escapes Alistair's mouth, and then he is nodding, stiffly. "Good," he whispers brokenly.

Zevran's fingers curl tightly around the leather gloves.

The warmth has already gone out.


	19. Red on White

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Sonder

Chapter Nineteen: Red on White

Cullen sees the sharp, shadow-cut form of Samson outlined in red light atop the hill. Snow is a delicate and surreal whiteness that dims the edges of his vision, a soft haze of light that softens his former comrade's crude outline against the darkness.

 _"It's an honor to serve with you, my brother."_

Samson's words echo like the hum of never-forgotten lyrium thrumming in his veins.

But Haven is a burning wreckage. And the screams are loud enough to drown the memory from his mind.

The only red that Cullen will abide is Samson's blood, splashed across the white snow.


	20. Bad Men

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Sonder

Chapter Twenty: Bad Men

Nathanial remembers every scar the Warden ever showed him that bore the name Rendon Howe.

But he also remembers a man who used to secretly shovel his own sweet fruit onto his son's plate while his wife wasn't looking. A man who helped him string his first bow. A man who, instead of belittling him, held him silently and firmly when he cried over killing his first hare. A man who never raised his voice or hand against him.

And he startles at the terrifying realization of how easy it is to forgive bad men when they are good fathers.


	21. Past

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Sonder

Chapter Twenty-One: Past

The road back home.

Cousland glances over her shoulder, past the winding road of red clay, past the dense canopy of trees hanging reverent like a cathedral, past the cobbled stone of a blood-splattered highway.

Past caverns that run as deep as her gnawing regret and cliffsides that drop as sharp as her battered faith.

Past stone and wood and all things green.

Past long stretches of earth that bear her footprints like scars.

Past, and past, and past, and past.

The road back home was always that – the road _back_.

She steps forward.

Cousland has had enough of 'past'.


	22. Forever Fixed

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Sonder

Chapter Twenty-Two: Forever Fixed

Meredith has always liked quiet, pretty things.

A star-strewn sky in the dead of night. The first breath of dawn across a Chantry courtyard. The candle-lit pews of a templar's vigil.

And Elsa.

The way her copper hair drags light into the room. The way her nimble fingers grip her quill. The way she dips her head in greeting as she walks past.

The way her brand of tranquility is forever fixed.

Meredith must remind herself that quiet, pretty things cannot dream.

Her hand grips at her heart, her lip caught between her teeth.

They cannot dream as she does.


End file.
